I never knew

An Austrian base jumper drops from 10 000 feet and then glides in free fall from England to France! Sweet!!

Seems Second Cup has just signed with NetWireless to offer WiFi hotspots in their cafes. Woohoo!! is of course my first reaction but… They dont say anything about the access being free. Actually, if you go to the NetWireless site you can see that their other hotspots are paying locations. Not good, first off free would be way better (duh!) but most importantly, I already have free access at two of the three closest Second Cups, I dont want to have them switch services! So, access everywhere: very good. Paying access: very bad.
(via a frog in the valley)

Le Kino du mois d’Août ce tiens ce Vendredi 1er à 20h00 à la Société des Arts technologiques, situé au 1195 Boulevard Saint-Laurent.

Le mois passé un groupe de blogeurs et amis s’y sont retrouvés et certains avait commentés ici leur intention de faire un tour au prochain. Contactez-moi dans les commentaires ou par courriel si ca vous intéresse toujours.

Dernièrement Denis (justement rencontré au w3qc hier) citait une de mes entrées concernant les mesures à prendre par Mozilla pour réussir une meilleure percée sur le marché des fureteurs.

Il apporte plusieurs bons points mais mentionne aussi le futur fureteur Longhorn d’une façon rappelant un peu le FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, Peur Incertitude et Doute) de Microsoft. En théorie Longhorn arrive en 2005, si on se base sur les (mauvaises) habitudes des gens de Redmond on peut probablement s’attendre plutôt à 2007. Denis mentionne cette hypothèse:

intégrée dans LongHorn 2005 redéfinit réellement l’expérience de navigation au-delà d’un certain point, il est possible que l’action de naviguer le Web, telle que nous la connaissons devienne soudainement beaucoup moins attrayante.

Et la donne comme raison de penser que Mozilla n’a pas le temps de faire une percée significative d’ici ce nouveau changement. Selon moi Microsoft arrive rarement à mener un marché par l’innovation de leurs produits, il le font plutôt en utilisant la synergie avec leur produits dominateurs et par des techniques de prix et de ventes aux limites (et parfois plus) de la légalité. De commencer à craindre leur nouveau fureteur des années en avance c’est de faire leur jeu.

Teens now spend more time online then in front of the TV and part of the TV watching is only as background to being online.

Teens and young adults almost universally engage in other media-related activities while they’re online: Some 68% listen to CDs or MP3s; 50% watch TV; 45% talk on the phone; 45% listen to the radio; 45% do homework; 21% read. Only 5% of those surveyed said they do nothing else while they’re online.

Une à la suite de l’autre je suis tombé sur deux entrées reliées. Alors que Tom se pleint (en) que les services anglos tels que DayPop, Blogdex et autres Technoratis sont de plus en plus centrés sur les États-Units simplement de part le volume de blogeurs américains, voilà que la nouvelle version de Weblogues.com nous arrive.

Très à propos puisque Tom se disait qu’il serait pratique d’avoir une façon d’augmenter la granularité de la blogosphère en pouvant limiter nos recherches de nouvelles à certaines zones géographique ou à un ou plusieurs démographiques. Il avait plutôt en tête un avancement des outils anglos existant mais weblogues.com offre exactement ce dont il rêve. Points de vus différent, dans ce cas-ci franco (il demande pour le UK), canaux thématiques par pays et même sa dernière requète, un canal gay.

Ce n’est pas encore l’idéal puisque c’est un autre service au lieu de l’avancement des anciens mais c’en est quand même un très beau qui permet de voir le monde sous un oeil autre qu’Américain. À quand un site regroupant et traitant des fils de nouvelles de tous les coins de la blogosphère? Un endroit ou je peut passer du fil “US” de Daypop au franco de Weblogues.com au fictif UKDex et au non moins fictif AussiePop?

En attendant, on peut profiter d’un bel accomplissement francophone. C’est rare mais il semble que cette foie la blogosphère franco devance le reste du monde des blogues. Félicitations à Mr. Vouich

Right on

Robert X. Cringely as come up with a crazy (or is it?) scheme for music sharing and paiement; he calls it Snapster. The theory, which he as supposedly checked with a few lawyer friends, is that a company could be created to become a sort of mutual fund of music albums where every share owner would have a legal right to copy every song on the thousands of album the starting funds would allow Snapster to buy. That’s the one line summary of a pretty detailed idea where he also includes numbers to “support” his theory.

I’m very very sceptical about this, even if it’s not currently illegal I’m sure the majors would do everything in their power to make it so pretty soon (he does mention this). What I’m more worried about is the fact that this covers only currently existing music, there is no structure to find and support new artists. Granted, they can now selfpublish through small online outfits and putting the big companies out of business might help this but I think the goal shouldnt be to destroy the majors but to offer a new channel of distribution and lower prices, more along the lines of Apple’s Music Store. We still need the classic distribution channels, at least for a while. How many people would actually buy a share of Snapster and download music through it? Not everyone is ready for that and if his idea worked it would make for too fast a transition.

His answer is that the majors can just buy in to Snapster and profit from the huge value it will build, becoming marketers of artists instead of the end to end job they do now. In theory it could work and help the new artists but doesnt the majors buying in to Snapster completely defeat the purpose?? How can users still get shares and buy into the music “fund” if big companies start “hogging” the shares?

I’m also wondering if it needs to be that big. Can 50 people get together, put in 20$ each in a little corporate entity (somewhat easy to setup), buy 65-70 CDs and share them? They could then put in a certain amount a month (5$?) or pay per song when downloading and use that to grow the collection which they would share through a private server. Any chance this could work?

I’ve been on a very good reading streak lately, three of the last four books were excellent and the other very good, probably why I read all of them in a pretty short time.

I read Yann Martel’s books starting from the last because I wanted to read something by him but wasnt all that interested in any of them. I was so wrong! I loved all of them and Life of Pi was an especially big surprise because it wasnt what I expected. Blork as a short review that matches my thoughts exactly.

Up next was Baroque-A-Nova, the story of a kid in Vancouver living through the resurgence of his seventies folk icon parents’ band. I have an account at Singlefile where you can basically keep a database of your books. The fun is that it’s linked to Amazon for info and suggestions. The reason I’m mentionning it is that I have a category named Young Bastards. It’s where I put kids writing brilliant novels that make anyone who’s ever dreamt of writing a book insane with jealousy. This one isnt quite brilliant but it does fit very nicely in the category.

The third book is also by a canadian (and I dont even choose them on purpose!): Flash Forward is not the latest by Robert J. Sawyer but for some reason I just got around to it and it’s a shame because it’s yet another great tale of near future Sci-Fi sprinkled with hard science and some pop culture and canadiana winks. He writes better Crichton than Crichton. Pick any of his books and give it a try.

The fourth book is from another Young Bastard, Nick McDonell who wrote Twelve which was published when he was 17. That’s 17 people! Born in 1984!! I’ve seen better writing but it’s still excellent and a very sharp, clear eyed look on his contemporaries. There are loads of quotes from reviewers in the first page and this one should give you a good idea of the caliber:

Nick McDonell is the real thing. The ratio of age to talent is horrifying. His trick is he writes the truth. I’m afraid he will do for his generation what I did for mine.—Hunter S. Thompson

That’s Hunter S. freakin’ Thompson!

Last part of the good streak isnt a book, it’s Pirates of the Caribbean which I also loved. Once again I’ll be lazy and point you to a post by another blogging buddy: C-speed chick cover’s it well but huh… for me take out the parts about Orlando Bloom and hobbits and let me say the lady wasnt completely forgettable.

Pirates of the Caribbean (8.0)